Man of Property eBook

Winifred Dartie coughed, and no one said a word.
It was the piece of evidence they had all unconsciously
been waiting for.

To do Mrs. MacAnder justice, she had been to Switzerland
and the Italian lakes with a party of three, and had
not heard of Soames’ rupture with his architect.
She could not tell, therefore, the profound impression
her words would make.

Upright and a little flushed, she moved her small,
shrewd eyes from face to face, trying to gauge the
effect of her words. On either side of her a
Hayman boy, his lean, taciturn, hungry face turned
towards his plate, ate his mutton steadily.

These two, Giles and Jesse, were so alike and so inseparable
that they were known as the Dromios. They never
talked, and seemed always completely occupied in doing
nothing. It was popularly supposed that they
were cramming for an important examination. They
walked without hats for long hours in the Gardens
attached to their house, books in their hands, a fox-terrier
at their heels, never saying a word, and smoking all
the time. Every morning, about fifty yards apart,
they trotted down Campden Hill on two lean hacks,
with legs as long as their own, and every morning
about an hour later, still fifty yards apart, they
cantered up again. Every evening, wherever they
had dined, they might be observed about half-past
ten, leaning over the balustrade of the Alhambra promenade.

They were never seen otherwise than together; in this
way passing their lives, apparently perfectly content.

Inspired by some dumb stirring within them of the
feelings of gentlemen, they turned at this painful
moment to Mrs. MacAnder, and said in precisely the
same voice: “Have you seen the...?”

Such was her surprise at being thus addressed that
she put down her fork; and Smither, who was passing,
promptly removed her plate. Mrs. MacAnder, however,
with presence of mind, said instantly: “I
must have a little more of that nice mutton.”

But afterwards in the drawing—­room she
sat down by Mrs. Small, determined to get to the bottom
of the matter. And she began:

“What a charming woman, Mrs. Soames; such a
sympathetic temperament! Soames is a really lucky
man!”

Her anxiety for information had not made sufficient
allowance for that inner Forsyte skin which refuses
to share its troubles with outsiders.

Mrs. Septimus Small, drawing herself up with a creak
and rustle of her whole person, said, shivering in
her dignity:

“My dear, it is a subject we do not talk about!”

CHAPTER II

NIGHT IN THE PARK

Although with her infallible instinct Mrs. Small had
said the very thing to make her guest ‘more
intriguee than ever,’ it is difficult to see
how else she could truthfully have spoken.

It was not a subject which the Forsytes could talk
about even among themselves—­to use the
word Soames had invented to characterize to himself
the situation, it was ‘subterranean.’